Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Workshop Wednesday! Finishing up Figurative Language with Poetry!

I'm excited to finally be able to join in on the Workshop Wednesday fun with my girl, Jivey!

I teach ELA twice a day to two energetic 4th grade classes. Maybe I'm an odd ball, but I absolutely LOVE teaching writing. I love encouraging students to share their creativity with me and I love seeing reluctant writers produce multiple pages with a huge smile on their face.

We just finished up our animal unit and worked a lot with figurative language. I know I posted a lot about this unit, but it seemed to go on forever. At first the students couldn't even tell me what figurative language or Author's Craft was. I'm sure they learned it in the past, but they insisted they were clueless. I started off putting up my figurative language bulletin board. Believe it or not, my students actually read the things I post on the boards. This proved to be very helpful for them.

For morning work I had my students work in groups working through the task cards a few days a week. This was the perfect morning work activity because my students all arrive at different times. This was also low prep. I didn't have to run around copying papers before school for morning work. They love quizzing each other, it keeps them quiet, they are engaged, and they are learning. Win/Win!

We are just finishing up the rest of our animal poetry. We worked in Google Docs on our Chrome Books in class with groups. We read nonfiction articles about animals, researched for more information about the animal, took notes, and created a poem portraying the researched animal. Students were to add figurative language and use strong word choice. While working on this project, the student's shared their work with me
via Google Docs. I logged in and provided each group with feedback and
they kept editing and revising their work until they were pleased with
the end result. The students shared their poems with the class via the
Smart Board and the class discussed the nonfiction facts they learned
about the animals. Overall, the lesson was excellent and the students
even asked to do it again.

Here are a few student examples from Google Docs. I love how they tried to incorporate the nonfiction facts into the story, like our mentor texts Verdi, Pinduli, and Stellaluna all by Janell Cannon.

We were also able to work with Jivey's awesome Idiom packet, which the students LOVED.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to print these fun posters out in color because our school's color printer broke, but the foldables were awesome resources for my students' notebooks! You will hear more about this Friday when I have pictures to share!

This week has been odd....snow day Monday, two hour delay Tuesday, and a snow day today, Wednesday!

What a crazy week for you! Your kids did a great job on their animal poems! I love how you said your kids actually reference your bulletin boards...mine do too! Makes us happy to know we're not wasting our time right?? LOLJoanneHead Over Heels For Teaching

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Thank you for stopping by our blog. We are two Connecticut, small town, fourth grade teachers. We have each taught 4th grade for eight years and are passionate educators. We love this grade level and enjoy working together. We especially love finding and creating useful resources for our students and teacher friends. We love making teacher friends online so feel free to send us an email or leave us a comment.